


The Turkey Egg Tavern

by stevierosebudds (vulcantastic)



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: F/F, Gen, M/M, SOFT ROSE SIBLINGS, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:00:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26226049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulcantastic/pseuds/stevierosebudds
Summary: Alexis and David share a moment at a Brooklyn dive bar.
Relationships: Alexis Rose & David Rose, Patrick Brewer/David Rose, Stevie Budd/Alexis Rose
Comments: 6
Kudos: 95





	The Turkey Egg Tavern

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I'm back. This is set in the universe of my story "I Think She Knows," but you don't have to have read it to understand this.
> 
> The bar in question is based on an actual bar that I've never been to but sounds fucking legendary and I can't wait to go when life resumes again.
> 
> Enjoy. Stay safe.

Glasses clink, chatter fades in and out, and the Roses watch their partners from across the room.

Patrick is leaning over the counter, talking animatedly with the bartender about what’s on tap. Stevie is patiently waiting for him to make a decision—which for her means casting him a pointed, withering look until he inevitably notices her standing there—with Alexis’ cosmo in one hand and her stout in the other.

David turns his attention to Alexis, who takes a sip of her lemon water, perched at the edge of a stool at a tiny table. She is wearing leather pants and a royal blue tank and so much bling from her neck up that David thinks she could possibly blind someone in the wrong lighting.

The bar is a Williamsburg hole-in-the-wall; David is pretty sure a drug exchange is happening outside the bathrooms, and he can’t guarantee the wooden furniture is one hundred percent clean.

“I can’t believe you let Stevie pick this place because it had a ‘funny name.’” He uses air quotes, scrunching up his nose.

Alexis rolls her eyes. “Get over it, David. Stevie’s the one who drove the two of you all the way down here, and she hasn’t seen _me_ in three weeks. ‘Driver who is also my girlfriend picks the bar.’ Isn’t that the rule?”

“Ah, nope, you made that up. Also, when would you be caught _dead_ in a place like this otherwise?” He gestures around him. There is a man asleep at the table across from them. It is unclear to David whether the table is his home. Also, some people over in the corner are drinking beers out of styrofoam cups. Styrofoam! Cups!

“Okay, _fair._ Spending my Friday night at ‘Turkey Egg Tavern’ is not how I pictured this weekend starting.” Alexis tosses her hair behind her shoulder. “But you know as much as I do, David.” She looks at him and her eyes go soft, clear water-blue, and David thinks, ah, fuck, here it comes: “It doesn’t matter _where_ you are. It’s, like, _who_ you’re with.”

“Oh, my god. Please don’t fucking start.”

“ _Da-_ vid.” And then she reaches across table, bangles jingling on her slim wrist, and touches his arm. “We haven’t talked about this, like, for real yet.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Um, I think there is.” She raises her eyebrows as if to say, _Duh._ “You had your cute lil’ housewarming party, and then I had to come back to the city for work. I, like, _barely_ had time to say goodbye. And now it’s been a little while, and Stevie’s been visiting me back and forth—”

David lifts his hands in defense, shaking his head. “I told you months ago. I’ve moved past the fact that you’re _actively seeing_ my best friend with whom I previously engaged in _benefits–_ ”

“Ew.” Alexis waves her hands frantically to cut him off. “I know _that_. We’re totally past that.”

“Okay, then _what_.” He crosses his arms, and she’s _still_ looking at him with an expression brimming with affection.

“I’m just like, really happy.” She beams at him, and it’s annoying, because David kind of wants to beam back, but that would be ridiculous. “I _love_ this for us.”

He watches her turn her gaze back their respective significant others. He follows. Stevie has put both the drinks down to tell a story using emphatic hand gestures. It’s apparently an amusing anecdote because Patrick is throwing his head back in the kind of full-bodied laughter that makes a soft warmth settle in David’s stomach when he hears it.

“That’s … “ He looks down at the table, studying the grooves in the oak. Looks back up at her again and knits his brows together. There’s no way he’s going to get weepy at 10pm on a Friday in New York before he’s even had a single drink. “Way too overly sentimental for a dive bar. Read the room.”

Then Alexis lets out this strange, frustrated growling sound that David is unsure he’s ever heard before, and it surprises him so much he takes a step back from the table, the foreign sound like a punch in the face. “Ugh. Fine. You know what, David?” She stands up from her chair and stomps a heeled foot. “I can’t believe Patrick is _married_ to you. You’re so _rude_ and, like, emotionally stunted!”

“Well I can’t believe _Stevie_ is _dating_ _you,_ ” David seethes, and his voice is getting increasingly louder, and he doesn’t care, because who can hear above the cacophonous noise of The Turkey Egg Tavern, anyway? “ _You’re_ self-absorbed and completely obnoxious!”

“I’m so glad I moved away so I don’t have to see you _every day._ ”

“Um, the feeling is mutual. _Trust_ me.”

They stand there silently fuming at each other for several seconds. David is happy to turn this into a competition if necessary. He refuses to be the one to speak first.

“David.” There’s a tiny bit of—pain? Unease?—in her expression now, and he hates that he may have caused it, and, fuck, why is he getting so emotional at the _fucking Turkey Egg Tavern_? “Aren’t you happy that we’re happy?”

The question lingers between them for a moment. He can’t look at her looking at him like that.

Of course he’s happy they’re both happy. Of _course_ he is. How can she not see that?

But then, he supposes they never really knew how to talk to each other, not like this, until fairly recently. And she can't be expected to read his mind, however convenient that would be. He lets out a long, shuddering sigh.

“We didn’t.” He bites the inside of his lip. Peers down at his high-tops. Tries to organize his thoughts, make them into sentences. “You and I didn’t. We weren’t meant for … this.”He nods toward Stevie and Patrick at the bar. “Or we thought we weren’t. We didn’t grow up thinking we could have …”

As he speaks, she hears him click-clacking over to stand beside him. He feels her link her arm through his. He can also feel she’s looking at him, but he can’t look at her, not yet.

“I always wanted …” He takes a sharp breath. Peers up at the ceiling. Is that gum up there? _How the fuck?_ “I wanted you to be safe. If not happy. I didn’t think either of us were ever really gonna make it to happy. So I settled on safe. And even that wasn’t a guarantee, and I was so fucking worried, _all the time_ …”

“I know—”

“—And we had so many _things_ , nice things, but really what I wanted was to have a sister I could talk to about boys with. And girls with. And whoever with. And to like, hang out with, but not in an incestuous _Game of Thrones_ way.” He roughly wipes a tear from his right eye before it can escape down his face. “But we were on opposite wings of the fucking house for our entire lives before we ended up on opposite sides of the _world._ So I just sort of gave up on that.”

He folds his hands in front of him on the table. It’s sticky. He hears Alexis, a slight tremble in her voice. “I wanted all of that too, you know.”

He sniffs. Finally looks at her. Her eyes are still shining. He says with as much sincerity as he can muster:“I mean, I also wanted the nice things. Those were great.”

“Yeah, duh.” She breaks into one of her signature crooked grins. She boops his nose. He lets her.

“David, I’m safe now. You’re safe now. And we’re both happy. It’s, like, more than okay to admit that.”

He nods, slowly. She squeezes his arm, forcing him to keep her gaze. “Patrick brings out the best in you. He calms you down when you need it; he’s a voice of reason when you need it. And you bring out the best in him. You help him see beauty in, like, everything. You’re perfect for each other, David. It’s kind of annoying.”

David nods again, unable to keep from smiling, because, well, she’s right. “Yeah, um, it annoys me sometimes too.” She lets out a teary one-syllable laugh.

“I guess, um. Stevie challenges you. In the best way possible. And is … steady. An anchor. For you,” he replies, the sentimentality of the moment still hanging over him, and he’s about ready for that drink now. “And you bring her out of her shell and help her see how kind of amazing she is. That’s … what I’ve been wanting for both of you forever. So.”

“So,” Alexis echoes, and for a second she looks like she did when she was twelve and he was sixteen, when she hopped on his bed and asked him for advice about school and friends and he had no idea what to tell her because he didn’t even know her; he had no baseline from which to draw. He never had any idea what to say to her.

But this time he he knows what to say. “So,” he repeats, “I am. I’m happy. For us.”

Alexis drops her head to his shoulder and says, “Me too.”

Just then, Stevie and Patrick saunter over with an array of beverages, and Stevie is already babbling:

“So I’m pretty sure that bartender was actually drunk; it took him like 40 minutes to explain the ales on tap—um.” Stevie places Alexis’ drink front of her and immediately takes a swig of her own. “Are you two okay? Because you’re touching.”

Beside her, Patrick’s big brown eyes are darting back and forth between him and Alexis, expression incredulous. “Are you sick? Do we need to go home?”

“Mm, nope!” Alexis breaks away from David to sidle up to Stevie, kissing her hair and slinging a lanky arm around her shoulders. “I like this bar. It’s cute in a like, Brooklyn-hipster-sad-poem sort of way. Nice choice, babe.”

Stevie glances at her with an expression that simultaneously reads, _You can’t be fucking serious_ , and _I really fucking adore you_.

“David?” Patrick gives David his vodka soda before taking his spot next to David, placing a gentle hand on the small of his back. “Aren’t _you_ impressed with Stevie’s breadth of knowledge regarding the Brooklyn bar scene?”

David lifts a hand to lightly graze Patrick’s short hair down to the nape of his neck, unable to keep the fondness from spilling out of him in the gesture, in his voice. “It’s fine, I guess,” he hums. Patrick laughs and pecks a kiss to his lips.

Alexis uses her free hand to raise her cup theatrically, prompting everyone else to do the same. “To happiness,” she says, winking at him.

 _God, she’s insufferable_. But David keeps his mouth shut this time. He raises his styrofoam glass, and she smiles at him, and he supposes this dive bar could be worse.


End file.
